In short, I want to be "left behind" so that I don't miss the "rapture".
My son graduated from Grandview high school in Spring of 2009. One of the things he brought out with him is an expression I'd never heard before: "You just got left!"
I don't have a solid definition of it, but it seems to mean something on the order of "you just had the wool pulled over your eyes" or "you goofed up so badly that you've been 'left in the dust' as everyone else moves forward.
It always struck me as being close to "You've been 'left behind'" - in the supposed Biblical sense.
In his book, My Absurd Religion (By Which I Make My Living), Pastor Steve Gray, in chapter 12, talks about the "Absurd End Times Ga Ga". Through this, I discovered that Christians have been scaring the hell into other Christians with this so-called 'rapture / end times / left behind' theory.
Pastor Steve notes that John (Nelson) Darby came up with this concept a little over two hundred years ago.
John Nelson Darby is indeed often credited with the "secret" rapture theory. The "Rapture" theory does not appear anywhere in the Bible. It is an English word, coined from the Latin root 'rapio', meaning 'caught up'. Apparently it was derived from the 5th century Latin version of the Bible - the Vulgate - from 1 Thessalonians 4:17. My Blue Letter Bible indicates the Vulgate word is 'rapiemur' - the root of which is 'rapio', meaning 'to seize and carry off'. The Greek root of the Textus Receptus is ἁρπάζω (harpazō) - meaning to 'seize and carry off by force'.
Now the problem. This is at the point, in the Bible, where the dead in Christ have risen from the graves. The people who were still alive on Earth are also there and the entire group is "seized and carried off" to the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
In this "rapio/rapiemur/rapture" - get this - no one is left behind! Presumably because all these people being talked about are those who are "in Christ".
Where the people "got left" is in Matthew 24:40-41. More about them later, because to sync these two, we have to take a short trip into the past, relatively speaking.
Okay, so let's go to Matthew 24:29-31, which resembles 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. The shout in the voice of an archangel, the trumpets trumpeting, the Lord appearing in the clouds. So, Jesus appears and then...
The dead in Christ rise from the grave to the Earth and the ones still living are already here. On Earth. In Thessalonians, the people are then taken/seized/caught up - raptured if you must - and "transported" to be with the Lord.
In Matthew, we have a further granularity, because Matthew wanted to share what Jesus said about how quickly this all would happen and how no one knew exactly when this would happen - including Jesus Himself - and how watchful we, in Christ, need to be. Just like in Noah's time, when no one knew what was happening until it happened.
And so we get to who got left and who didn't. Our setting at this point is that the dead have arisen and have their incorruptible bodies on Earth. As to the ones who were still alive, he says:
Mat 24:40 Then two men shall be in the field, the one is received, and the one is left; 41 two women shall be grinding in the mill, one is received, and one is left. (Young's literal translation).
In the King James version "received" is "shall be taken" and "left" is "left".
Since "received" is so much different than "taken", I got curious as to how these and the word "left" were translated. So, I went to BlueLetterBible.com to dig into the Greek.
Boy, was I surprised.
The Greek root word translated as both "received" and "shall be taken" is παραλαμβάνω paralambanō. According to the Strong's lexicon link I clicked, this Greek word can mean many things. None of which exactly match the two English words.
Look up Strong's G3880 and you'll see: sense 1 is 'to take to' and 'to take with one's self' and 'to join to one's self', among others. Sense 2 is 'to receive something transmitted' and 'to receive with the mind'.
It would seem to me that the closest modern equivalent is, then, something like "...the one will accept and not reject that knowledge which they have been given...". The point being that they accept and stay right where they are (for the time being). They do not yet "disappear".
"Left", on the other hand, is from the Greek root ἀφίημι aphiēmi. With a lot more definitions in Strong's G863. Its shades of meaning run from "to send away" through "a husband divorcing his wife" and, running a few random ones together: to "let go/to disregard/leave/give up" and my favorite: "to go away, leaving something behind".
WHOA!
The one that is "left" isn't "left behind" - he actually chooses to "leave something behind"!
It would seem, then, that the one "taken" actually accepts what is happening and stays and the one "left" actually walks away, perhaps shaking his head in disbelief. By doing this, he actually leaves the believer behind.
So, Mr. Darby "You just got left!" and missed the boat on the rapture idea. Me, I want to be left behind by the non-believer, so I can ascend to the Lord in the air and thus remain with Him.
My son graduated from Grandview high school in Spring of 2009. One of the things he brought out with him is an expression I'd never heard before: "You just got left!"
I don't have a solid definition of it, but it seems to mean something on the order of "you just had the wool pulled over your eyes" or "you goofed up so badly that you've been 'left in the dust' as everyone else moves forward.
It always struck me as being close to "You've been 'left behind'" - in the supposed Biblical sense.
In his book, My Absurd Religion (By Which I Make My Living), Pastor Steve Gray, in chapter 12, talks about the "Absurd End Times Ga Ga". Through this, I discovered that Christians have been scaring the hell into other Christians with this so-called 'rapture / end times / left behind' theory.
Pastor Steve notes that John (Nelson) Darby came up with this concept a little over two hundred years ago.
John Nelson Darby is indeed often credited with the "secret" rapture theory. The "Rapture" theory does not appear anywhere in the Bible. It is an English word, coined from the Latin root 'rapio', meaning 'caught up'. Apparently it was derived from the 5th century Latin version of the Bible - the Vulgate - from 1 Thessalonians 4:17. My Blue Letter Bible indicates the Vulgate word is 'rapiemur' - the root of which is 'rapio', meaning 'to seize and carry off'. The Greek root of the Textus Receptus is ἁρπάζω (harpazō) - meaning to 'seize and carry off by force'.
Now the problem. This is at the point, in the Bible, where the dead in Christ have risen from the graves. The people who were still alive on Earth are also there and the entire group is "seized and carried off" to the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
In this "rapio/rapiemur/rapture" - get this - no one is left behind! Presumably because all these people being talked about are those who are "in Christ".
Where the people "got left" is in Matthew 24:40-41. More about them later, because to sync these two, we have to take a short trip into the past, relatively speaking.
Okay, so let's go to Matthew 24:29-31, which resembles 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. The shout in the voice of an archangel, the trumpets trumpeting, the Lord appearing in the clouds. So, Jesus appears and then...
The dead in Christ rise from the grave to the Earth and the ones still living are already here. On Earth. In Thessalonians, the people are then taken/seized/caught up - raptured if you must - and "transported" to be with the Lord.
In Matthew, we have a further granularity, because Matthew wanted to share what Jesus said about how quickly this all would happen and how no one knew exactly when this would happen - including Jesus Himself - and how watchful we, in Christ, need to be. Just like in Noah's time, when no one knew what was happening until it happened.
And so we get to who got left and who didn't. Our setting at this point is that the dead have arisen and have their incorruptible bodies on Earth. As to the ones who were still alive, he says:
Mat 24:40 Then two men shall be in the field, the one is received, and the one is left; 41 two women shall be grinding in the mill, one is received, and one is left. (Young's literal translation).
In the King James version "received" is "shall be taken" and "left" is "left".
Since "received" is so much different than "taken", I got curious as to how these and the word "left" were translated. So, I went to BlueLetterBible.com to dig into the Greek.
Boy, was I surprised.
The Greek root word translated as both "received" and "shall be taken" is παραλαμβάνω paralambanō. According to the Strong's lexicon link I clicked, this Greek word can mean many things. None of which exactly match the two English words.
Look up Strong's G3880 and you'll see: sense 1 is 'to take to' and 'to take with one's self' and 'to join to one's self', among others. Sense 2 is 'to receive something transmitted' and 'to receive with the mind'.
It would seem to me that the closest modern equivalent is, then, something like "...the one will accept and not reject that knowledge which they have been given...". The point being that they accept and stay right where they are (for the time being). They do not yet "disappear".
"Left", on the other hand, is from the Greek root ἀφίημι aphiēmi. With a lot more definitions in Strong's G863. Its shades of meaning run from "to send away" through "a husband divorcing his wife" and, running a few random ones together: to "let go/to disregard/leave/give up" and my favorite: "to go away, leaving something behind".
WHOA!
The one that is "left" isn't "left behind" - he actually chooses to "leave something behind"!
It would seem, then, that the one "taken" actually accepts what is happening and stays and the one "left" actually walks away, perhaps shaking his head in disbelief. By doing this, he actually leaves the believer behind.
So, Mr. Darby "You just got left!" and missed the boat on the rapture idea. Me, I want to be left behind by the non-believer, so I can ascend to the Lord in the air and thus remain with Him.
"EDWARD IRVING IS UNNERVING" is fantastic! I found it on Nov. 12th on the "Our Daily Bread" blog hosted by media personality Joe Ortiz. Shocking to the core! Richie
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